


Change

by Yaminouchi (Asphyxia)



Category: Gravitation
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Yuki has feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 00:10:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3589014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asphyxia/pseuds/Yaminouchi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eiri has always stubbornly resisted change, but from the moment they met, Shuichi forced it on him without even knowing, and he can't say he minds. ShuichixYuki from Yuki's point of view. (Teeth-rotting fluff, introspective Yuki)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Change

Eiri Yuki was not good at change. 

It was a fact that could be backed up by anyone who knew him. Eiri was stubborn and he was rigid, and when it came to his lifestyle and his habits, he rarely made exceptions and he rarely allowed for any wiggle room when it came to the people who came into his life and tried to get close. In his first twenty-two years of life, he did his best to live everything by his own terms, did his best to make it nearly impossible for anyone who wanted to control his life to do so. For his teachers, he was either an incredible gift (in writing language classes) or an absolute nightmare (in everything else). For his friends and family, he was a constant source of headaches and eye rolls.

As Eiri grew from a stubborn and passionate little boy into a stubborn and passionate young man, those closest to him began to notice the futility of trying to mold him to fit the situations they thought were best for him. For the most part, they simply stopped trying. That pleased Eiri, because that was the way he liked it. Eiri didn’t like being forced to change, didn’t like being forced to compromise or adjust or deal with new situations and people and things. From the time he was old enough to comprehend it, Eiri wanted a life lived on _his_ terms. 

As he found a niche for his writing, settled down with a publishing company, figured out the lifestyle as an adult that suited him, he comfortably adjusted to things as an international sex symbol and ladies’ man, and he thought he’d found what he wanted. With the exception of Mika and Tohma’s occasional mother-henning, Eiri had, by moving to Toyko, left behind the overbearing upbringing his family had attempted. He moved far away from his father and his temple and his arranged marriage to a sweet but boring little girl and he found himself comfortable in the life he wanted; fast cars and beautiful women and interviews and television appearances. More royalties than he could possibly spend. He bought himself real estate and cars and had more women flocking to him than he could possibly sleep with in the hours allotted by the clock, but that didn’t matter because with his newfound fame he felt he could buy more hours for the day if he really wanted to. For once, the turbulence in his mind and heart was quieted by the constant distraction of sex and fame and work. Eiri was a shy person by nature, but he was also a confident one, and so it was easy to push aside that shyness and blossom into fame like some kind of ridiculous blonde flower. 

For a while, Eiri was able to grow comfortable with his routine. He was kept so busy by his work and his constant stream of lovers that whenever he had a spare moment to think, he just popped one of his prescriptions and tried to block out the noise in his head with the sound of his keyboard tapping. It wasn’t so much that Eiri enjoyed fame, but he enjoyed the freedom and he enjoyed the various distractions it offered. It was much easier to forget what had happened in New York when he had so much to fill his time with. He wasn’t exactly happy, but he was occupied and he was medicated and he was, by all counts, surviving. Eiri Uesugi had morphed almost overnight into Eiri Yuki, the confident and suave playboy who everyone wanted for their own selfish and dishonest reasons, but that was fine by him. He got what he wanted from them, and then they both moved on. Life took on a kind of almost soothing monotony, punctuated by the occasional bout of intense suicidal panic that he always had Tohma Seguchi close by to soothe. Life wasn’t great, but it was enough, and Eiri had adjusted.

And then he met Shuichi Shindou. 

For Eiri, who had grown so accustomed to ignoring his sexuality and distracting himself with women he could barely feign interest in enough to get them to come back more than once or twice for a fuck, Shuichi was something else altogether. The kind of intense and blindly passionate lust he felt for him threw him completely off-kilter. For the first time, something threatened to force change. Eiri put it off as long as he could, tried to tell himself he was annoyed by Shuichi and wanted to brush him off like a fly or some other comparable pest. But then on the day he first lost control and they melted from pressed against the wall to lying on the floor with their lips locked with a kind of white hot sexiness Eiri had never really felt, it became apparent that things were going to have to change. 

“No,” he told himself stubbornly, eyes rimmed with red and purple from four days without sleep as he agonized over the situation with the pink haired annoyance who spent more time in his home than elsewhere. But despite denying himself permission he crumbled and he needed him, he made him his lover and he fucked him with the kind of raw and unprecedented passion that he assumed existed only in novels. From that day, things changed. Shuichi came around more and more, moved into his home, and against his better judgment, Eiri let him. He let him fall in love with him, let him make him vulnerable to him. He let Shuichi pry open the raw and tender and still bleeding heart that he had shielded so carefully from the world for six years and he let him burrow himself inside so deep that there was no possible way he could get him out. 

He let Shuichi Shindou make Eiri Yuki fall in love with him. 

Love was something that had never been on the agenda, and Eiri wasn’t completely sure what to do with it. Half the time, it felt like he was having a heart attack. The other half it felt like a hangover. Shuichi made him do things he would never do, like run after him to New York and spew out his guts like a scene from a shitty romantic comedy, like cry in front of him, like say the sort of ridiculous and cheesy and saccharine things that only an absolute doofus would ever dare to whisper. Shuichi made him do ridiculous things like blush and cry and giggle and all around lower his coolness factor to something he was sure was somewhere far below zero.

Shuichi changed him. 

It took quite some time for him to even be aware of the fact that it had happened, and when it became obvious to him, everything stood out in glaring relief and Eiri was really, fully aware of the impact the boy had on his life. The pink hair was gone now, back to his natural black, but he was no less ridiculous. He held Eiri’s hand in public and kissed him in front of crowds and sang to him the kind of banal, shitty romantic lyrics that when they first met had made him want to claw out his brain so he didn’t have to remember them. Now, against all odds, they made him cry. They made him sob openly and they made him kiss Shuichi and hold him and make love to him in the shuddering, open sort of way he’d never imagined he would ever do with anyone. Probably without even realizing it, Shuichi removed a shattered, fragmented heart held together by fragile strings and strengthened it into something far less breakable. Eiri let him keep it, and after the night at Shuichi’s concert when he hummed instead of singing the lyrics Eiri had given him, he knew there was no way he could ever, ever take it back. And the chances of him wanting to take it back…were shockingly even slimmer. 

Even now, it was hard to adjust. Eiri hated change, and he hated being forced to adapt, but with Shuichi’s constant doting, Eiri found it happening unconsciously. It was still a little odd to turn on the radio in the car and hear songs coming out of the speakers that were achingly tender and mushy and almost tooth-rottingly sweet and know they were written about him. It was different, to switch off his computer the moment he heard Shuichi’s keys rattling in the door and come to his arms with his reading glasses still on, letting himself get lost in his kisses. It was bizarre to him, to be off his meds and be cutting down his visits with his therapist because he didn’t _need_ it, because Shuichi was more than enough of a prescription to help him move on. It felt alien to wake up in the morning _happy_ and smile and join his lover in the shower and not have to be in a dark place, to find spaces in his brain to live where it was light and warm and filled with good things. After spending so long almost _marinating_ in the painful attachment to the past, it was a good kind of weird to have the default thoughts be of his relationship when his mind wasn’t busied by work or interviews or sleep. And Eiri, who had for so long been stubbornly resistant to change, found himself embracing it. And it became less and less strange, to wake up in the middle of the night and shift, find Shuichi’s warm body sleeping predictably next to him, and kiss his lips and whisper three tiny words into the quiet darkness. And that was when Eiri knew that now, this was the new standard for living. This was the new life he lived on his own terms, and he was, for the first time he could remember, happy. 

“Yukiiiiii,” Shuichi calling dotingly from the sofa. Eiri, who was sipping at his beer near the window, turned his head to see his lover sitting with his elbows resting on the arm of the sofa and his chin propped up on them, his large brown eyes fixed on him. “What’re you doing?” 

“Thinking,” Eiri answered, a simple and effective response, taking another swig of Budweiser and letting his eyes drift lazily over the building-dotted fringe of the horizon, the lights of the city twinkling in the already faded light. Clearly this didn’t placate Shuichi, because he made an impatient noise.

“You’re supposed to be watching a movie with me, remember?” the singer mewled in his best pouty tone, giving Eiri a not-so-formidable glare that disappeared when the novelist moved away from the window and rather roughly mussed his lover’s hair, plopping down onto the sofa next to him. “We’re gonna be in New York next week and we’ll be too busy to do stuff like this. I don’t wanna miss out because you’re _brooding_.”

“Who’s brooding?” Eiri asked, shooting Shuichi a sidelong glance and taking out a cigarette, lighting it and taking the first puff as Shuichi scooted closer, wiggling his side up against the blonde’s. With the tiniest of smiles, Eiri pretended to be grudging about slinging his arm around the smaller man’s shoulders, resulting in a happy sigh from the object of Eiri’s affection. “Now start the movie before I fall asleep. Your whining is boring me to death.”

“Asshole,” Shuichi chided gently, grabbing for the remote and then snuggling himself more securely into Eiri’s embrace. “I love you.”

“Mhm.”

Eiri Yuki was not good at change, but as far as he was concerned, that didn’t matter.

He was perfectly content with keeping things just the way they were now.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukd5V-N7zjM


End file.
